Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

Researchers at England’s University of Birmingham announced in May that they had powered a fuel cell by giving chocolate waste to Escherichia coli bacteria, which converted the sugar into hydrogen. (The bacteria are also expected to produce precious metals from discarded automobile catalytic converters.)

Researcher Mayu Yamamoto of Japan’s International Medical Center said her team had succeeded in extracting vanilla from ordinary cow dung, although she conceded the flavoring could only be commercially used in non-food products like shampoos.

In June, a man attempted suicide in Huntington Beach, Calif., by hanging himself off the side of the Adams Avenue Bridge, but he accidentally came loose, fell to the dry riverbed below, and was killed.

In May, a 30-year-old man from Waterfoot, England, attempted suicide by tying a rope around his neck and the other end to a telephone pole, and then drove off in his car. However, the rope quickly broke, dooming the suicide. The impact, however, jarred the driver, causing him to lose control and crash into a tree, fatally.(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD

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